Jaroslav Šterzl and his rise to prominence

the Masaryk Gymnasium in Pilsen, where he studied until 1943, when he was assigned to the Technical Help Corps during the German occupation.Because he contracted diphtheria in 1944, he was spared transfers to forced labor camps in Germany.Instead, he worked temporarily in the law office of JUDr.Pexider in Pilsen.In the spring of 1945, before the end of the Second World War, Jaroslav worked as a technician in the Department of Pathology at the Pilsen hospital under the direction of MUDr. A. Čech.There he benefited from access to important medical textbooks in anatomy, histology, and biology (Sterzl 2015). Early stepsDuring his student years, Jaroslav developed a strong interest in botany.He collected plant specimens in the area around Pilsen and published Czech-language articles on the subject in the local journal Nová Doba.After the war, and before moving from Pilsen to Prague to continue his studies at the Faculty of Medicine, he visited the distinguished physiologist Prof. V. Laufberger in 1946 to discuss topics of particular interest to him, including respiration and metabolism in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, work that was later published in 1947 (Sterzl 2015).After graduating from medical school in 1949, Jaroslav worked for two years at the Institute of Medical Microbiology under the direction of Prof. MUDr.František Patočka.Although he had the opportunity to relocate with Prof. MUDr.Ivan Málek to the Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Králové, he chose to remain in Prague.In 1951, he was accepted as a graduate student (an "aspirant" in Czech) at the Institute of Biochemistry of the newly established Academy of Sciences, under Drs.Rychlík and Říman, now the Institute of Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Sterzl 2015).During this period, in 1953, Jaroslav experienced a reactivation of tuberculosis and was hospitalized for three months.He used this time productively, writing and editing